Three Cuban dancers who defected last weekend won't wait long before
taking the stage again.
Posted on Tue, Dec. 18, 2007Digg del.icio.us AIM reprint print email
BY JORDAN LEVIN AND ANI MARTINEZ
jlevin@MiamiHerald.com
Three leading dancers with the National Ballet of Cuba arrived in Fort
Lauderdale late Monday after defecting following a performance in Canada
last weekend.
The dancers -- Taras Domitro, 21, Hayna Gutierrez, 26, and Miguel Angel
Blanco, 24 -- crossed the border from Canada at Buffalo, N.Y., sometime
between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, and requested political
asylum from immigration authorities, according to Pedro Pablo Peña,
artistic director of the Miami-based Cuban Classical Ballet.
All had been performing with the National Ballet of Cuba in The
Nutcracker in Hamilton, a city in Ontario, Canada, in a co-production
with the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble.
Domitro, the son of Magaly Suarez, co-artistic director of the Miami
troupe and herself a former dancer and teacher with Cuba's national
ensemble, was accompanied by his mother as he and his fellow dancers
stepped off the plane at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Her eyes red with tears, Suarez clutched her son with one arm, a
carry-on bag with the other.
''I've been waiting for this moment for nine years but it had to be his
decision,'' Suarez said.
The three were all principal dancers with the National Ballet of Cuba.
Domitro has danced leading roles in Don Quixote, Les Sylphides and
Giselle. Gutierrez, the oldest, is already a confident and experienced
ballerina. Long-legged Miguel Angel Blanco's father was a theater director.
''I think what happened in Cuba is that I got to a point where I had
reached the top,'' Domitro said. ``Here I want to grow . . . in front of
a different audience and I want to grow with a different company.''
He'll get his chance soon: The three already are set to perform with
Peña and Suarez's Cuban Classical Ballet in Swan Lake on Feb. 23 and 24
at the Fillmore Miami Beach.
Practices begin in the next two days, Domitro said.
Rolando Sarabia, 25, studied with all three of the Cuban arrivals at the
National Ballet in Cuba, and partnered Gutierrez frequently from the
time he was 6 years old.
''They're magnificent dancers . . . any company would be happy to have
dancers at their level,'' said Sarabia, who defected in 2005 and now
dances with Miami City Ballet.
The National Ballet of Cuba is directed by the iron-willed 86-year-old
Alicia Alonso, a famous former ballerina revered for overcoming
blindness and founding the Cuban company. But Alonso has clashed with a
series of leading dancers and even her own daughter, Laura Alonso, over
control of their careers.
''It's always what they want,'' Blanco said. ``It's not what's best for
the artist. It's very difficult in Cuba for you to become
internationally recognized whereas here I will have that chance.''
Suarez had traveled to Canada to see her son perform, Peña said. She
called him on Monday morning to tell him of the decision her son and his
companions had made.
Earlier this month, the three dancers were declaring their loyalty to
their home country and company.
''To dance in other places is important, we know. But Cuba is our
homeland. It's given us everything. We would never give up what we have
there,'' Gutierrez said in an interview published Dec. 12 in The
Spectator, a Hamilton area newspaper. ''It's a privilege to dance with
the National Ballet of Cuba,'' Domitro said in the same interview.
El Nuevo Herald's Wilfredo Cancio Isla contributed to this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/cuba/story/348569.html
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